<OT> Book announcement: Optimality Theory and Language Change

[D. Eric Holt]

Book announcement:

Optimality Theory and Language Change
Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Volume 56
October 2003, 472 pp.

Edited by
D. Eric Holt 
University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

Optimality Theory and Language Change:
· discusses many optimization and linguistic issues in great detail;
· treats the history of a variety of languages, including English, French, Germanic, Galician/Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish;
· shows that the application of OT allows for innovative and improved analyses;
· allows researchers that appeal to OT to see the connections of their (usually synchronic) work with diachronic studies;
· contains a complete bibliography on Optimality Theory and language change.

This volume may be used as one of the texts in courses on historical phonology or syntax that treat these topics from generative approaches or that give a general survey of various frameworks of research into these areas. Likewise, the volume may serve as a text for courses in phonology, syntax and Optimality Theory that have a component dedicated to extensions of linguistic theory to historical change. It is of interest for historical linguists, researchers into Optimality Theory and linguistic theory, and for phonologists and syntacticians with an interest in historical change. 

Ordering information:

Hardbound, ISBN 1-4020-1469-4
Paperback, ISBN 1-4020-1470-8
For more information visit: http://www.wkap.nl/prod/b/1-4020-1469-4 

Customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australasia: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Order Dept, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands
F +31-78-6576476 T +31-78-6576050 
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Customers in the Americas: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Order Dept, P.O. Box 358, Accord Station, Hingham MA 02018-0358, USA F +1-781-681-9045
T +1-781-871-6600 or (toll free within US) +1-866-269-wkap 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of contributors	

Acknowledgements	

PART I: OPTIMALITY THEORY AND LANGUAGE CHANGE: OVERVIEW AND THEORETICAL ISSUES

D. ERIC HOLT
Remarks on Optimality Theory and language change 	

PAUL BOERSMA 
The odds of eternal optimization in Optimality Theory 	

RANDALL GESS
On re-ranking and explanatory adequacy in a constraint-based theory of phonological change	

RICARDO BERMÚDEZ-OTERO & RICHARD M. HOGG
The actuation problem in Optimality Theory: Phonologization, rule inversion and rule loss	

APRIL MCMAHON
When history doesn't repeat itself: Optimality Theory and implausible sound changes 	

CHARLES REISS
Language change without constraint reranking	

PART II: CASE STUDIES OF PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE

DONKA MINKOVA & ROBERT STOCKWELL
English vowel shifts and 'optimal' diphthongs: Is there a logical link?	

VIOLA MIGLIO & BRUCE MORÉN
Merger avoidance and lexical reconstruction: An OT model of the Great Vowel Shift	

HAIKE JACOBS
The emergence of quantity-sensitivity in Latin: Secondary stress, Iambic Shortening and theoretical implications for 'mixed' stress systems	

CONXITA LLEÓ
Some interactions between word, foot and syllable structure in the history of the Spanish language	

D. ERIC HOLT
The emergence of palatal sonorants and alternating diphthongs in Old Spanish	

JAYE PADGETT
The emergence of contrastive palatalization in Russian 

PART III: CASE STUDIES OF SYNTACTIC CHANGE

BENJAMIN SLADE
How to rank constraints: Constraint conflict, grammatical competition and the rise of periphrastic _do_ 	

LARRY LAFOND
Historical changes in verb-second and null subjects from Old to Modern French	

Bibliography on Optimality Theory and language change
RANDALL GESS	

REFERENCES 	

INDICES 	
Names		
Languages 	
Constraints	
Terms